Those of you who have followed the Star Wars hexology(?) will understand that the Sith Lords have been driven out, and persist now only as a warning, waning memory.

However, a more serious enemy has arisen: The Myth Lords!

These are the owners of the multinational mainstream media corporations, keen to spread mental poisons to all their unsuspecting viewers, listeners and readers. Prejudices, lies, titillating trivialities and half-truths are their preferred toxins. A perpetually confused, demanding, unhappy and compliant populace is their target. When that is achieved, a consumerist hell will have been incarnated on this good Earth. The little people will be farmed, mercilessly, to fatten the barons further.

A fatted baron, having just supped on a lamb

Well, they aint won yet. The vulgar, common, herd can be transformed into a noble, singular, corpus. This change can be initiated in the twinkling of an eye, and will only take one word:

Hello everyone. We arrived back from Erin on the nightboat last night. Yoda has made a full recovery, and is ready to look after his pub again. (And his staff too. Teresa, yours is not the only pay cheque not paid yet).

So tonight’s discussion is all about Ireland. I am 100% Irish myself-out of Waterford by Mayo. However, when I say that with my perfect Oxford/BBC diction, it gets some funny looks. That’s when I tell ’em I am working undercover 😉

Yes, I was raised in England by my immigrant parents, and thus lost out on a fine Irish education. It’s true that the Irish are smarter than the English, and that is why the latter are always doing us down, to make them feel better. Bless! With citizen ambassadors in every corner of the world, the sun never sets on the Irish Empire. Are you for us, or a guinness?

Of course, the devil has been hard at work in Blarney. I remember the shame I felt when taking the kids to the beach there some years back: As I stepped out of the car I trod on a used condom. The media stinks of anti Catholic propaganda on every channel and in every rag. The liturgical abuses seem universal.

There is some hope: following the sudden death of the celtic tiger, people are finding it easier to talk to priests than to bank managers. Vast new empty housing estates act as monuments to those times when common sense was sacrificed to the god of avarice.

Yoda got to meet some old mates: Obi Wan Kenobi has reinvented himself as “DeeJay Ale C.”

Chewbacca has taken up chewing baccy. Hans Solo has turned out be a right jerk.

While, errh, cataloguing the liquor store, I unintentionally overloaded my internal organs, and am now even greener than normal. My physician, a certain Dr McCoy, has recommended a rest cure, and so Burrito and I are off to the Emerald Isle to seek some healing.